In what condition will a package switch to newer major version of some software?

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Let me take ```Julia’‘’ as an example:
Currently, there are three versions of Julia package: Julia (Julia 0.6), Julia_07 (Julia 0.7) and Julia_10 (Julia 1.0).

In what condition will the Julia (rather than Julia_10 and Julia_07) point to Julia 1.0 (or newer main stream version)?

I installed Julia by mistake and found that my Julia version is rather out of date, so that is why I ask this question.

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When some changes this attribute: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/e0fd84cf439f39d31e2c317b228b0c035cc6211d/pkgs/top-level/all-packages.nix#L7237 to point to the new version.

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To expand on @Mic92’s answer,

  • On release channels: only security fixes are applied and software should not bump major versions. There might be some exceptions for example Firefox and Chrome releases.
  • On unstable channels: generally as soon as the new major version is packaged, unless it breaks too many packages. Especially compilers, and some libraries might have the new major version packaged but not switched to.
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